page_title: Marton, New Zealand
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Marton, New Zealand / History
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the main street in Marton. Photograph taken by Albert Percy Godber circa 1924.
context_page_description: Marton is a town in the Rangitikei district of the Manawatū-Whanganui region of New Zealand's North Island. It is situated 35 kilometres southeast of Whanganui and 40 kilometres northwest of Palmerston North.
  Ngāti Apa are tangata whenua for the Marton area.
  The town of Marton is the largest in the Rangitikei district, and began life as a private township in 1866, when shop and housing sections were sold at auction by local landowners.
  At the time of the 2013 census, the town had 4,548 residents.
  Marton has always been a service town for the fertile farming region of the Manawatu Plains. Butter, wool, and flour have been among its agricultural products. The arrival of the railway in 1878 led to rapid growth in the area, which soon added industries such as engineering, sawmilling, and textile production to its economy.
context_section_description: For three years the small village was known as Tutaenui, named after the stream running through its centre. In 1869 local citizens changed the name to Marton to honour the birthplace of Captain James Cook in Middlesbrough, marking his landing in New Zealand exactly 100 years earlier. It is not known if this change of name was influenced by the mistranslation of 'tutae' (meaning 'dung') and 'nui' (meaning 'large'). (Actual translation: 'tu' -stand, 'tae' -arrive, 'nui' big; i.e., a 'big gathering').
  From the start Marton was an ideal supply centre for district farmers, who first began arriving in the early 1850s. From butter and wool they moved on to growing wheat in 1863, and big crops led to three flourmills being launched in the area in 1864.
  After the town itself opened up in 1866, general stores, two hotels and several blacksmiths soon started. Marton became a home base for the horse industry, with saddlers, wheelwrights, livery stables and coachbuilders competing for business, while Clydesdale and Suffolk Punch sires toured the district to build up the population of plough horses needed as new farms sprang into being.
  The opening of the railway line joining Wanganui to Palmerston North in 1878, now part of the North Island Main Trunk railway (towards Palmerston North and Auckland) and the Marton - New Plymouth Line (towards Wanganui), turned Marton Railway Station into a thriving railway junction, and it held that position for the next 100 years.
  Timber from Rangitikei forests served the town's two timbermills, the first from 1889 onwards.
  Industry developed quietly at first in Marton, starting with flourmilling, brickmaking and wool presses. By the late 1950s there was an incredible array of industries and factories in action. They turned out products as diverse as men's shirts, tractor safety cabs, soft drinks, vegetable salads, readymix concrete, field tiles, dog biscuits, knitwear, dried peas, electronic petrol pumps, vegetable digging machinery.
  9 km from Marton was the large Lake Alice Hospital for psychiatric patients, which opened in 1950 and closed in 1999. It included a maximum security unit, and housed hundreds of patients during its 49 years of operation.
caption: Main Street in Marton circa 1924
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